CompuTools Blog
Explore in-depth guides, tutorials, and insights about engineering tools, development techniques, and best practices.
Why 0.1 + 0.2 ≠ 0.3: IEEE 754 Is Working as Designed
Ever had a unit test fail on 0.1 + 0.2 == 0.3? This post explains why IEEE 754 binary floating-point cannot store decimal 0.1 exactly, how f32/f64 bit patterns differ, and what to do in billing, games, and embedded systems—with math and code.
Why Your Modbus CRC Keeps Failing: Algorithm Variants, Byte Order, and the Check Value
Most Modbus RTU CRC mismatches are not math bugs. They come from picking the wrong CRC-16 variant, reversing the two CRC bytes, or hashing the wrong slice of the frame. This post walks through a debugging sequence you can reuse — starting with the catalogue check value 0x4B37 — and how to confirm CRC-16/MODBUS in a browser calculator.
Browser-Based Dev Tools: Why WebAssembly and Local Processing Actually Matter
Do you actually know what "processed locally" means when you're picking an online dev tool? Here's a breakdown of how WebAssembly changed the browser calculator landscape — and why, for everything from CRC calculations to 3D rotation transforms, you should care whether a tool phones home or not.
Mastering Robot Arm Kinematics: A Practical Guide to Forward Kinematics, Inverse Kinematics, and DH Parameters
A complete practical guide to understanding robot arm forward kinematics (FK) and inverse kinematics (IK) using DH parameters and the Jacobian matrix. Covers SCARA, 6-axis vertical articulated, and custom DH models — with step-by-step calculations you can verify instantly using a browser-based IK calculator and 3D robot arm simulator.
Checksum vs CRC vs Hash: Which Should You Use for Data Integrity Verification?
Checksum, CRC, and cryptographic hashes (SHA-256, MD5) are all tools for verifying data integrity, but their design goals and security strength are fundamentally different. This post compares the mathematical principles and real-world use cases of each algorithm, and provides clear criteria for choosing the right one for your situation.